NONSUCH 



Today, the sand was again covered, not with sar- 

 gassum but with strange leathery, long-leaved kelp 

 and rainbow-banded alg^e torn up by unseen 

 watery forces. Great rollers gathered force, like 

 charging lines of cavalry, filling the little bay from 

 cliff to cliff. Here at last they could use their 

 strength to the utmost, and work the havoc which 

 seems the sole purpose of heaving water. Higher 

 and higher they rose, changing from opaque to 

 translucent emerald and finally that unnamed hue 

 born of equal mixture of sea and sky and air, and 

 then — they sank quietly, unbroken, slithered a 

 little distance up and back into the curve of the next 

 potential wave. Not until I walked out into the 

 water did I discover the reason for this sudden 

 fiasco, these unbreakable breakers ; — there was a 

 solid zone of the kelp, self-colored with the water, 

 which made of the thin, active liquid a thick, mo- 

 lasses-like soup. These were some of the changes 

 which came about with no apparent wind to cause 

 them. 



At ten o'clock on the evening of August twenty- 

 fourth, I was interrupted for a moment while look- 

 ing at something which was five quintillions ( or, to 

 put it so that you can immediately grasp it; ^ve 

 billion billions) of miles away. My lips were mum- 

 bling these figures, and my brain was vainly striving 

 to formulate some intelligent response. But there 

 was at least a deep feeling of awe and humility. One 

 could get flashes of the kindly, indulgent humor 

 with which mankind's frantic strutting and his bab- 



164 



